


Oscillation

by utsushiame



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Dissociation, Gen, Mentioned Tyrell Patrick, Post-Canon, Resident Evil 1 Spoilers, Resident Evil 3 (2020) Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23566900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utsushiame/pseuds/utsushiame
Summary: Two incidents, two survivors, and two states of mind that Jill can only shift between so many times before she breaks.Then again, she might be broken already. She certainly feels that way as she and Carlos leave Raccoon City behind.
Relationships: Jill Valentine & Carlos Oliveira
Comments: 6
Kudos: 44





	Oscillation

Her home was gone.

Personal effects, medical prescriptions, months of research, all lost to a blazing inferno. Ornaments from her childhood. Pictures of her parents. A whole part of herself and her history had been ripped out, burned to ashes, and lost to the wind.

When Jill realised that, however, she only felt a dull ache in her chest.

The sun had nearly set, the sky cast purple and pink by its fading rays, but Jill couldn't tell if it was warm or cold. An evening breeze rolled through and she could barely feel it caress her skin. She crunched the dirt under her feet, and neither the sound nor feel of it was satisfying.

She didn't feel alive right now.

She didn't feel dead, because then there'd be nothing to feel. She didn't feel undead, because she'd had enough nightmares, day after day, to recognise the fear, rage, and hunger that haunted those of half-life, nothing else to keep them going but the primal urges of a beast.

No, if Jill had to describe it, she felt like a strain of bacteria held prisoner under a microscope: alive, technically, but with none of the joys that came with it, just the awareness of existence and blind following of genetic orders that some sick scientist observed from on high. 

The scientist wore a red-and-white badge upon his lapel, of that she had no doubt.

Jill looked down at her hands, lying on her lap as she sat just inside the resting helicopter. One was burned from the wrist to the bottom of her thumb, the origin of the injury unknown. (When her apartment had been set aflame? When Nemesis had attacked with a flamethrower? When she'd been escaping the crumbling Nest 2 facility? When...)

The other held a broken, empty vaccine container.

That was it. That was how she felt. Broken and empty.

Ever since Nemesis had boarded the train, slaughtering innocents (for _nothing_ , no reason, just collateral), Jill had felt something come loose inside her. But she'd needed to move, to survive, powered by spite against her unstoppable stalker and the increasingly distant hope that _something_ good could be salvaged from the smouldering remains of Raccoon City.

And this was it. Two survivors, maybe a handful more. The city was destroyed, tens of thousands dead, their only hope lost to a money-grubbing bastard looking for a quick buck. How had Nikolai been planning to live with himself after this? Even now, hollowed out and empty as Jill felt, the thought of so much death on her shoulders was unbearable.

_Not all monsters had rotten skin and claws._

If she'd been just a second faster, a second less hesitant to shoot Nikolai, the vial in her hand might've been full right now. Raccoon City might still exist, its civilians rescued and cured. Had she not been injured, burned, poisoned, whittled down again and again by Nemesis, she might've been sharper, moved quicker, been _better_. 

Jill knew that despairing over what-ifs was pointless. She'd spent the two months after the Arklay Incident going over and again all the ways she could've _somehow_ saved Joseph, Marini, Sullivan, Speyer, Dewey, Aiken-

(Brad. Brad was dead. Most of the people she knew were dead. Had Kendo made it? She had no idea.)

-and all it had netted her was an extra pill to take each morning. She'd be suffering withdrawal if she didn't restock all she'd lost in the next few days. Not that it mattered much- what good could a handful of pills do her after she'd experienced the same horror all over again?

Empty, broken.

Something slammed down next to her, and though Jill was aware that she flinched, that her hand snapped to the near-empty handgun at her waist, she didn't feel fear. Only a vague thrum of alarm.

"Relax, supercop." It took her a breath to remember that she wasn't alone- that while she'd been ruminating on the city left behind, Carlos had been focused on the present. He patted the first-aid box that had made the sound. "Your buddy should be picking us up soon. Let's get that wound redone before he shows."

 _Which one?_ she almost asked, but Carlos' eyes were on the grubby bandage wrapped around her upper arm. "It can wait till we're somewhere cleaner." she said instead.

"That's the only thing that even came _close_ to taking you out. I don't want to risk our chances after we already bet it all back in the city."

She wasn't up to protesting more, so she let him open up the kit and tug off the old bandage. The skin underneath was grimy with dirt and sewage, but still shades brighter than the rest of her. For a second, she almost forgot its true colour.

The wound itself was unremarkable, a dark puncture caked in dried blood. She felt the phantom pain of the barb first going through and shuddered. "Calling dibs on the first shower."

"I'm not stopping you." Carlos smirked. Jill stared at it, trying to decipher how real it was. "After your go-around in the sewers, we _both_ need you to get cleaned up."

"You aren't forgetting whose ass I saved by doing that?"

"I'm not about to forget _anything_ you pulled off back there." Yesterday she would've scoffed at him for the obvious pass, but now... Jill was still adjusting to the realisation that Carlos was genuine most of the time, too wrapped up in her own tangled processes to try and unravel his. It'd been too long since she had a partner- too long since she'd had someone she could talk to without worrying that their conversation was being recorded.

Ironic, that she'd finally feel that way while speaking to an Umbrella worker. Well, ex-Umbrella, to his credit.

She wanted to ask him what he planned to do now, since his previous company had nearly gotten him blown sky high, but she knew that would lead to questions about her _own_ plans, and her head was too empty to consider any prospects. Her subject of revenge had shifted- from 'kill Nemesis' to 'kill Umbrella'- but there were places to start with taking down a corporation, steps to be taken, and she couldn't think of any right now.

So, instead, she was silent as Carlos cleaned the wound the best he could and then swathed it in a fresh bandage. "That should hold until we can get it to a doctor."

"A doctor? What would we even tell them? Knowing what we do, it'd be safer for us to stay off the grid while Umbrella's still around."

"...Can't argue with that." Carlos sat down properly, his legs dangling down next to hers. "Still, all the more reason for you to keep an eye on that thing."

"Is that an order?" She tried to be teasing, tried to remember what it felt like. Her words rang hollow, but the tone wasn't too hard to muster.

The way that Carlos looked at her though, she knew he'd seen through it. While the rest of him was rugged, his eyes were some of the most gentle that she'd seen, and all the easier to read for it. Almost a shame they were hidden under his mop. "Should be you calling the shots here. I didn't even know those bastards were behind this till it was way too late."

Jill couldn't fault him for that. Two months of investigation into the company had turned up precious little dirt. It was infuriating; to know what they were guilty of, and how deeply their sins ran, but with nothing to show for it. A pawn and a failed whistleblower, licking their wounds after their manipulator escaped with its crimes.

Carlos didn't need to be reminded of that. "You did good where it counted. Saved my ass plenty of times. That's what matters." It was the truth anyway. Jill had put her trust in him- even after Wesker, even knowing her every move was being watched- and it had been the right thing to do. Carlos could've been as useful as a wet paper towel, and still his loyalty to her would've been invaluable.

Really, he'd saved her more times than he took credit for. Seeing the way he smiled at her, she couldn't help but wonder if the reverse was also true.

His mirth didn't last long. The sun was only just skimming the horizon now, dark blues staining the sky above. Still no sign of Barry (to be honest, until she saw that familiar grizzled face, Jill couldn't believe that his radio call was anything more than a fantasy) or of anyone else for that matter. The dirt field was as vast as it was empty.

As she scanned the barren land, Jill heard Carlos sigh under his breath. "Hey, uh..." He didn't continue for a long moment, lips twitching as he struggled to find the words, until eventually he huffed to himself, probably deciding to just get it out. "How did Tyrell die?"

...Right. With all the chaos that had happened, Jill had nearly forgotten that he was amongst the many victims. Her stomach clenched at the thought that she'd dismissed an ally so easily, someone who had helped her without hesitation.

There really was something wrong with her.

"Nemesis." was all she said. All she needed to say. Carlos nodded, his eyes screwing shut, and it wasn't any clearer than at that moment that the pain weighing Jill down was a shared one.

"Me and him talked a couple times about how we thought we'd go out." She heard the tightening of leather as his hands balled into fists. "I'd do something stupid out in the field- _brave_ and stupid if I was lucky. He'd live long enough to pour a drink on my grave. T thought he'd retire after that, live a long life: I always told him that he was too strong to give it up."

 _Stop and do what? I got your back._ Jill had only known the guy for a handful of minutes, but she felt his loss like he'd been a member of her own squad. She couldn't imagine how much Carlos was hurting.

Except... she could. "I lost most of my team two months ago." The words tumbled out of her, hollow like she was. "Six dead- seven now- one turned traitor. I was gonna flee to Europe with the survivors before all this..."

It seemed like such a distant, impossible goal now, as strange as it was to think that with Barry en route. Escape the country, recuperate their forces, retaliate with a vengeance... there was nothing Jill wanted more than to see Umbrella topple, and she'd be damned if she didn't put her everything into it. But how many times would she be put through hell before it happened? How long before she broke beyond repair, no more helpful than all the mindless undead she'd gunned down?

How long before there was no Jill Valentine left?

She felt a pressure on her right arm, and then surprise as she was pulled to the left, her head toppling naturally to rest on Carlos' shoulder. "Don't keep it in, supercop." She couldn't see his face from this angle, but she heard the strain in his voice. "It's over now. We don't need to."

There wasn't anything to keep in. She was empty, strong, broken, all of the above, fearless in the face of death and lost otherwise. In the morning she was determined, unstoppable, and at night the shards of her mind would stab her until she bled. She was a juggernaut when she needed to be, and cracked porcelain when she wasn't.

The median, the in-between, she'd forgotten what it was like. How to live when not balancing on the edge.

As if sensing her turmoil, Carlos' thumb rubbed light circles into her arm. For a moment she wasn't here, but in a different helicopter, blades whirring as her head lolled peacefully against her partner.

They were alike, Chris and Carlos. The very model of a hero- battle-hardened, kind-hearted, willing to risk it all if it saved even one life. Carlos had made clear how much he respected her, how much he trusted in her strength, and like any good partnership the feeling was mutual. Not just because he reminded her of her old partner, but something that was altogether mundane and yet more important to her now than anything else in the world.

He kept her stable. Like the earth below them, dependable and ready to catch her if she fell. When she had lost herself amongst the thousand other casualties in Raccoon City, he was here to remind her that she was alive, that she could be more than broken and strong, that she was Jill Valentine.

The wind chilled her, and she was grateful for it.

**Author's Note:**

> i think it's very sexy of carlos to want jill to hold him in her big strong arms


End file.
